Topic: The seven heavens and the ascension Posted: 09 August 2005 at 11:17pm

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate:

"Glory to Allah who took his servant got a journey by night from the sacred mosque to the farthest mosque whose precincts We did bless- In order that we might show him some of our signs: For He (Allah) is the one who hereth and seeth all things." Surah 17:1

The ascension of the prophet was one of great importance in Islamic theology in which, many have understood it as both dream and revelation. However there are two kinds of Muslims on the position of this subject there are those who believe that this was indeed a physical body experience and the others who believe it was a mystical experience hence the following:

The belief in the Ascension of the Prophet is general in Islam. Whilst the Asha'ri and the patristic sects believe that the Prophet was bodily carried up from earth to heaven, the Rationalists hold that it was a spiritual exaltation, that it represented the uplifting of the soul by stages until it was brought into absolute communion with the Universal Soul. (Ali, The Spirit of Islam, p. 447).

The language in which God speaks to us is diversified based on each individual and how God speaks to us is diversified based on our own understanding. When we learn it is perhaps the same way the tools in which we learn from are both learned in diverse ways as well as our apprehension of them. For the prophet, the ascension was more of the ascension of knowledge of God. We can say that this experience was of the literal sense since the prophet has described various depictions (via Hadith) of heaven and hell and his experience in both.

But what we can also do is take away is the ascension of knowledge of the heavens Muhammad ascended to and fro in reaching God at the end. To understand the ascension is to try to understand the seven heavens. Hadith states that Muhammad the prophet (peace be upon him) travelled through the seven heavens but, what does that really mean? Philosophically speaking according to Muslim philosophers God is everywhere and not in one place. As for the seven heavens when Muhammad reached the empyrean and in the presence of God there, he found God to be there.

The ascension is not necessarily the bodily experience that we conceive it is but more so about knowledge. When one comes to the plateau in his own understanding of God then one reaches a blissful end which ascends the mind/soul to the empyrean. Muhammad was no great scientist, or thinker but his unity with God and his mission allowed him to be great through his discipline on the practice of Islam which in the end of his journey allowd him to ascend both mentally and physically to be one with God.

Assalamu'alaikum warahmatullahiwabarakatuh.
Actually, I'm surprised with apple pie and deus questions. I think I had heard hadith about Prophet(peace be upon him), had been brought from Mecca to Aqsa's mosque then ascended to meet Allah. But I'm not sure who was a 'rawi' for this hadith. InsyaAllah I will try to find that.

First we should note that the sacred mosque was the the Qibla which was Makkah, which was aforetime Jerusalem but since the fall out with the Jews it was told that the Qibla which one prays now is Makkah. Beit-ullah which is the Kabbah or which surrounds it is the sacred mosque. The fasrthest mosque in which the Night Journey speaks of is the damaged temple which is in Jerusalem.

How we know about the Sacred mosque is:

It is reported that the Prophet Muhammad said, "There are only three mosques to which you should embark on a journey: the sacred mosque (Mecca, Saudi Arabia), this mosque of mine (Madinah, Saudi Arabia), and the mosque of Al-Aqsa (Jerusalem)."

Also another Islamic website offers this:

The Arab grammarians classify masjid as "ism makan", i.e., "name of location"; it indicates the place where an action takes place. Masjid being derived from the root sa-ja-da (to prostrate), it means "place of prostration". Since a place of worship is a place where believers prostrate to God, "masjid" is a general term to designate any place of worship without any religious distinction. Later, this word was used to designate Islamic places of worship in particular, i.e., the mosques.

The Prophet's(P) night journey was from "the inviolable place of worship" (al-Masjid al-Haram) to "the farthest place of worship" (al-Masjid al-Aqsa). The former is certainly located in Makkah, but what about the latter? The reference to Allah blessing its surroundings (... whose precincts We did bless) suggests a location in the "Holy Land" (cf. 21:81; 7:137; 34:18). Neal Robinson states:

The [Muslim] tradition which identifies it [i.e., al-Masjid al-Aqsa] with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem makes admirable sense in view of the fact that the 'place of worship' (masjid) whose destruction is evoked in v. 7 [i.e., 17:7] is clearly the Temple.[2]

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